


The Summer

by achanceofbella



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: 80's, AU, Coming of Age, F/F, Fluff, Lesbian, My First Work in This Fandom, Work In Progress, do they get together in the end? honestly idk I haven't decided yet, not super character accurate, slowburn, tw mention of AIDS, wlw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28389762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achanceofbella/pseuds/achanceofbella
Summary: Piper Chapman and Alex Vause AU set in rural America in 1987 - They're 18, Alex is the new neighbor who makes Piper realize some things about herself. Updates on Thursdays :)
Relationships: Piper Chapman & Alex Vause, Piper Chapman/Alex Vause
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	1. Get To Know The Feeling Of Liberation And Release

Piper's POV.

We had new neighbours. A mother and daughter - just the two of them, starting a new life in our picket fence America. We were everything you dream of, all the whitewashed porches and short lawns; they must have come here to fulfil some fantasy of theirs. My house was at the end, the biggest one: four floors, five bathrooms. The Vause's, as I later found they were called, had the smaller house next to us, for their smaller family. She was my age, just finished high school and spending one final summer with her mom before starting her life. We were alike, too alike. 

The day I met her was a few days after they arrived, after the moving van had gone, leaving all these cardboard boxes inside their house where I couldn't see them. I was sitting in my room and thinking about them, about their ground floor which I knew must have the same layout as ours. I tried to picture them but couldn't - I'd only caught glimpses of them earlier: her mom's brown curls and red lipstick and young Alex's hair, still brown, before she started dying it, but with the same blacked-framed glasses. Were they sitting eating dinner? Or watching TV? Or wondering about us just how I was wondering about them?

My room had a balcony, as did every house's second floor bedrooms on the street. Like a little lego town, carbon-copies of semi-detached lives. Or, in our case, entirely detached. I could see into their room - the new girls room - it was like a mirror, set up the same way as mine. Instead of belongings, though, her's was full of unpacked suitcases and boxes. The French doors onto her balcony didn't have curtains yet, so I could look out of mine and see her moving around in hers. In mine, the radio had been playing love songs that I couldn't really relate to, so I skipped through three songs that detailed boys wearing girls down until they said yes, and landed on some independant station playing last Octobers Crowded House single - Don't Dream Its Over. I turned it up and closed my eyes. This was the summer I wanted. 

That was meant to be the summer. The summer. I was eighteen and had left high school, I should have been moving out or getting a job or falling in love with some boy who played football. I had plans, I did, but I had no real motivation to fulfil them. So, instead, I just had this holiday with nothing to do - no work, no revision for exams, no prep for new classes. I could walk, listen to music, watch tv and cook, do whatever I wanted - but I wanted none of it. I enjoyed the boredom to an extent, but it also felt resoundingly... empty. Like biting into a Caramello chocolate and finding it hollow. All that promise and no caramel. I wanted this to be the highlight of my teen years, and yet I found myself wishing it could be two years ago, with Larry Bloom buying me candy whenever I wanted and Polly Harper convincing me to get drunk for the first time in the basement of her uncles house when we were meant to be babysittying. I was still friends with Larry, had still never payed for any candy when hanging out with him. Polly, though, my best friend, had moved all the way to California and left me in upstate New York, alone. So I was just getting older, and my summers were just getting worse.

Downstairs Cal and Mom were baking - Cal had this thing about making christmas food at other times of the year: spiced cookies mid-summer, roast turkey for Easter, hot chocolate in August, but especially gingerbread in spring. Or 'springerbread', as he had dubbed it. They said they were baking it for the new neighbours. I wanted to get up, have a shower and get dressed, but what was there to do when I was ready? So I stayed in bed and kept my eyes shut.

I thought that maybe that summer I would redecorate my room. I didn't like the wallpaper in there, the wallpaper me and Dad put up when I was thirteen. It seemed like a good summer project, then again, new wallpaper was just a waste of money when I was planning on leaving before the end. Maybe I'd just rearrage the furnature instead, or take sample after free sample from the paint store until I could cover my walls. Or paper magazines onto the ceiling like teenage boys with centrefolds. I had some posters saved. Or maybe I should do none of that, and preserve what was left of my childhood in that room so that I could come back when I was older and still have those hot summers indented into the walls. I didn't want the smell to leave, to be replaced with paint rather than this slightly lavender, freshly washed clothes hanging from the wardrobe doors, copper pennies heated in the sun until they make your eyes water. If I re-did the room, I would be choosing that that room belonged to the current me, and the future me, rather than the girl of the past. I didn't want that house to be my present and future. 

Apparently Larry tried to call me last night, which was sweet of him but there was always the chance I would have cried and told him I loved him, or talked to him about that one dream I had two years ago where I dreamt I lost my virginity to him. It wasn't something I necessarily wanted, but I still hadn't forgotten it. Anyway, it wasn't a conversation I wanted to have over the phone where Cal could click on whenever he pleased. 

"Honey," Mom's pet-names were sweet without context, but I knew that whatever demand was coming was not one I could refuse. She had walked up into my room to ask me for something, something she could probably get herself but was making me do.

"Yeah?"

"It's yes." She corrected, already annoyed. "Will you go shopping for some icing, please?"

"Sure." 

"Get some groceries for your Grandma, while you're there."

"Of course."

She handed me twenty dollars. "There's a list on the fridge."

Fifteen minutes later I was in the supermarket, following my Grandma's list but adding some extra treats because I liked my Grandma, I really did, when someone called to me across the store, and I looked up.

"Hey." She smiled at me and I almost didn't recognise her.

"Hello?"

"I'm, uh, you're new neighbour? You dropped off the gingerbread, right?"

"Springerbread." I corrected, on Cal's behalf, "But yeah."

"Um," She half-laughed "OK."

"See my brother had this whole thing about Christmas food-" I suddenly realised she didn't care, "Basically its gingerbread but in the spring. So, springerbread."

"Well, it was nice, so thank you." She turned away, to the bakery section, reaching with the plastic tongs towards a pastry. 

"Wait-" I stopped her. "Go for the raspberry one instead. She makes the jam herself."

"You have wild raspberries round here?"

"Mmm-hmm. July through September."

She gave me a half-smile and chose the raspberry one. 

We walked home together, down the middle of the almost deserted roads through town, back to the street we lived on. The street we shared. I was meant to take a detour to my Grandma's house, but I could do that later - it seemed more important, right then, to get to know this girl. She was reserved, but there was also something about the way she talked as if every sentence was daring me to do something. When I laughed at something she said, she had looked at me with this look in her eyes that I couldn't place at all. No girl had ever looked at me like that.

-

Larry called me again last night, and I actually talked to him. We were on the phone for maybe half an hour, me trailing the long cord into the living room and lying on the sofa, trying to find my footing with an old friend.

"We need to hang out more. I missed you, Pipes." Everyone called me that, my family and Polly and anyone who meant anything to me - but it still made me feel special in some way when it was coming from him. 

"I'd like that." I admitted. "I've been thinking about... everything."

"Everything?"

"I don't know - that summer with you and Polly, and we were so close but we haven't talked since then, but we should have."

"You're right." He sighed, his breath soft against the telephone, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault."

It felt like we were in this bubble, on this ship in the floods. Like I was stuck with him, with the sunset falling slowly through the window onto me. When I wasn't with him, I had no feelings except friendship, but sometimes, when he made me feel like he liked me, I wanted to admit the dream I'd had. 

"I know, but I miss it, I wish our friendship lasted longer. But-"

"Right." I searched for an excuse, "How's, uh, I can't remember her name-" He had a girlfriend, I remember that, this cute farm girl with the pigtails who smoked roll-up cigarettes. 

"It doesn't matter. We're- I mean she-. It doesn't matter." He was never very good at saying what he meant - he danced around, repeating words and leaving sentences unfinished. He had told me once that he wanted to be a journalist, so maybe he was better at writing than talking, but I was never sure.

"You split up."

"Yeah. Something- something like that."

"Huh." 

"What about, your boyfriend, um-"

I interrupted. "I broke up with him. He cheated on me."

"Oh. I'm sorry." His tone was sympathetic.

"Are you?" 

"Yes. No. A little. Pipes, last year I-"

"Give me a second." I could feel some revelation coming, and I moved into the other room, where my Mom could no longer hear me.

"Ok." 

Sometimes I felt like he was just putting up with me - but what would be the point now?

"Larry... I should tell you something." Maybe I was reading the room wrong, maybe not. Either way, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling that I needed to get my feelings out. 

"I had a crush on you in our junior year." I told him, flatly, "That's it. That's the secret." Like it was something big we had building up towards, and not just something I wanted to say. I didn't even know why I had said it, I just wanted some sort of reaction out of him.

"Last year?"

"Was it only last year? Yeah, I guess."

"Really?"

"Really."

"I liked you too." He said, for once getting to the point.

"I'm flattered."

"But it's too late?" There was this hope in his voice that I had rarely heard, that made this moment a little more climactic when otherwise I felt like it was meant to be a grand scene and I felt next-to-nothing.

"I think so. I'm sorry, Larry. It's been a year. A lot has changed."

"I know."

I had to find an excuse to end the conversation, to figure out what I wanted. 

"I've got to go," I said, and we both knew it was a lie, but he let me go anyway.


	2. Now You're A Hotshot, Think You're So Carefree

I needed to talk to Alex again. I had this feeling, even after one conversation, that she would be important to me. I knew that I would look back at these first weeks where we barely knew each other and wonder how I could not know everything I later knew. 

It was a nice day, early summer sun coming through the windows, and I could see her in her room - as I always could. She was not yet on edge, not yet hiding herself from the world. I could see her walking around her room, putting up mirrors and books and portraits. I pulled out a sheet from my now discarded English book and found a sharpie on my desk. Across the page, I wrote 'Hi.' in big black letters and then folded it up into an airplane, hoping she would find it amusing rather than immature. I threw it from my balcony into her room, and for a moment it spun mid-air, sinking in that gap between us until I thought it might fall short and end up in her garden, but then it found its way between the spokes of her railings and slid on its belly towards the box she was taking books from. 

She looked down and glanced towards me as she picked it up, unfurling it to reveal my note. I waited for a reaction. 

Stepping onto her own balcony, so we were only maybe a couple of meters apart, she smiled. Opposite her, I thought about how if we both reached out our hands then our fingers would brush. 

"Hi." The way she spoke challenged me, echoing my note as if teasing.

"Good morning," I replied.

"Morning."

"I was just thinking that, you know, moving is difficult. Especially in summer if you don't know anyone and can't go to school to make friends. I was just wondering if I could help... with anything?"

"Oh. I think I'm good, actually."

Her dismissal washed over me, even though I knew it wasn't a rebuttal of my friendship, just my offer to help. I was suddenly shy, wanting her to like me.

"So, do you like the neighborhood?" I asked another question, hoping she'd open up.

"Yeah. It's warm and very... nice. I miss my friends, though."

"Yeah, of course. I was- nevermind."

"You were what?"

"Nothing."

She brushed her hair behind her ears, watching me. I got the impression that she was calculating how she felt about me, and what to do next. "What about you? Do you like it here?"

"I do."

"How long have you lived here?"

"Oh, five years? Since I was thirteen." I threw out my age, hoping she'd reciprocate. 

"And what is there to do here?"

"The woods are super pretty?"

"Oh yeah?"

"It's kind of... rural. It's a bit too far for a day trip to New York so we have to stay here in this small town. I don't know - there's a bowling alley? A cinema? A couple convienience stores. Also! A market once a week, that's always fun."

She laughed, not quite at me, but not really with me either. "I'll check them out."

We were both quiet for a second, then someone called her from inside, presumably her Mom. She held up a finger to silence me, which from anyone else might have seemed rude but to me, it felt almost friendly, like we were a step closer. 

For a moment she talked to her Mom, just out of earshot, but half way through she turned back to me. "Hey, Piper?"

"Hmm?"

"You said you wanted to help?"

"Yes, if I can."

"You can. Do you have any batteries? Either we didn't bring any or we can't find any."

"Oh, sure. What type?"

She turned back to her Mom, asking her, then back to me. "Transister Radio Batteries?"

"I think I have some of those."

I knelt down on the carpet next to my bed, conscious that she could see me on the ground, and opened one of the white-painted draws beneath it. Returning to my balcony with the blister-pack, I saw she already had her hand outstretched towards me. I was right about the distance, the two arm's length - that if we both reached out we would touch; here she was offering me that opportunity, her pale hand reaching for mine. She had notes scribbled on the back of it in biro, but I couldn't read them and it felt too personal to try. Instead, I just reached out towards her with the battery pack between my two fingers, and we both stretched until she could reach them. I let go and she returned to her own side. It felt like an accomplishment. 

"Thanks." She smiled at me and tucked her hair behind her ears again, and held my gaze for a second, before turning to give her Mom the batteries.

-

My best friend lives in California, way too far to regularly visit, but we called every week to catch up. Or at least, we were meant to, but I had spent the previous Sunday afternoon waiting downstairs for her call that never came. 

The next week it was my turn to call, so I called at 3 pm. On the dot. I liked to be punctual, because I know that when she was late I ended up nervous by the phone, slamming it down on telemarketers and spinning the cord around my thumb until it cut off my circulation. Polly picked up on the second ring.

"Piper! It's been a while." Her tone was all kinds of achingly familiar, almost making me cry. I didn't comment on how the while was her fault.

"Hey, Polly, how are you?"

"Ok, so you know what's funny?" She sounded like a poster-girl for America, with the slow west-coast accent. I could picture her, in a dress that was a little too short and tanned thighs beneath them. Muted tones, dyed brown hair that looked gold in the sun.

"What's funny?"

"Guess who's house I was at last Sunday?" When she was meant to be calling me.

"Who's?"

"Petes." She said in this faux self-assured voice that I knew meant she was actually kind of scared about my reaction.

"Come on, Polly, really? Why do you keep playing with his feelings?"

"I'm not."

"He clearly likes you. You going over for a date is just leading him on. You're being a tease."

"It wasn't a date. We were watching M*A*S*H reruns and playing never-have-I-ever."

"That's a date."

"We're just friends!"

"I don't understand why you still talk to him, Polly. You could have anyone - boys are lining up for you."

"He's just sweet."

I sighed. Sometimes I was jealous of Pete, that he got to watch tv with her on his couch when she was meant to be calling me and I was stuck on the other side of the country. It was like he was replacing me in her life.

"I'm not replacing you." She read my mind, "I just miss you."

"You didn't call last week." I had promised myself that I wouldn't be petty and bring it up, but now it was spilling out.

"You didn't ring me, either."

"It was your week."

"I don't want to fight about this, Pipes. I'm sorry, I should have rung, and I didn't. But we're talking now." Her apology was so insincere it hurt.

"Sure." 

"I should ring my dad." She said. It had been five minutes, and she was already leaving.

"Ok." Where had our friendship gone?

"I love you." 

"As much as you love Pete?" I teased

"More. Much more." But then she hung up, and I hadn't told her that I loved her too, which didn't really matter, but I should have done. But I couldn't ring back just to say it, so I just put the phone back in its holder.

Slowly, I walked back up to my room. Outside, Dad was mowing the lawn, I turned the radio on to drown it out. Queen was playing - Crazy Little Thing called Love. It was once me and Polly's favorite song when we were ten. My first kiss had been to that song - not that it was a real kiss, not at all. There was a story there, but one I refused to think about.

I looked out across the balcony. Alex must have been too hot, unused to the summer climate. Her french doors were wide open, and the curtains that she'd put up that morning were spread apart so I could see clearly into the room. Right into where she was getting changed, crossing the room wearing just her bra, her hair piled on top of her hair with a holographic scrunchie. I watched her for a moment too long, until it got weird.

I lay back down and thought of Polly, of our short conversation that we had both been dying to leave. Once, I had been so comfortable around her she was like my sister, and now there was this tension that I couldn't explain. She was there and I was here and we were just too far to make it work. I wanted to be honest with her how I used to be, all my thoughts coming easily from me, and her listening. But I couldn't.

I looked back up and Alex had a shirt on.

"Hey." I rose and walked towards her. "Do you want to go on a walk?"

She laughed. "A walk?"

"Yeah, I could show you around, a bit? There's this really cute path through the woods."

"Sure. Give me ten minutes."

"Okay." I smiled at her, and she returned it.

Ten minutes later we were in front of our respective houses, me in jeans and this leather jacket that had once been Larry's, and her wearing a sundress. That surprised me a bit, she didn't seem like the type for dresses, but somehow in those ten minutes, she had changed into one. She's also let her hair back down, which was always the way she wore it.

"Are you cold?" She asked, laughing.

"Are you hot?" 

"Yes." She said confidently, but I didn't get the joke until later, replaying the day in my head.

We walked down my road, which I had seen a million times, but I was watching it from a new perspective, trying to see what she would see. At the end, there was a field, protected by a wooden fence. 

"Can you climb it or do we need to go around?" I asked her.

"Are you kidding?" She turned her head, flicking her hair over her shoulders. "Race you."

We held for one... two... three... then ran to the fence like ten-year-olds, finding footing on the bars. I swung myself over, sneakers hitting the ground a second before hers. She sighed in defeat.

"See that hill?" I pointed it out. "We always walk up it on boxing day and have a picnic on top and eat all the Christmas leftovers."

"Wow."

"Yeah, we bring mulled wine sometimes. Sometimes family friends come, so you're welcome to come next year."

"Won't you be in college next year?"

"Probably." I stopped walking. "Still, I think I'll come back for Christmas."

"If I'm around I'll be there." She promised, continuing to walk. "Where do you want to go?"

"For college?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know. I want to get out of here." I spread my arms, "Travel the world."

"Oh yeah?" She laughed, "Me too."

We walked for a minute in silence, following the stream down until it turned into a river, and we were walking into the woods. 

"You miss your friends yet?" I asked.

She kicked a stone, "Yeah, of course, I do." 

"My best friend, she lives in Cali-"

"Cali?" She mimicked me.

"California." I blushed. "Whatever. I haven't seen her in like six months and it sucks."

"My best friend is back home. We used to hang out every day: he went to my school and we still met up on the weekends. I think maybe now I'm in withdrawal."

"Have you talked to him?"

"A bit. A couple of calls. Not enough."

"What was his name?"

"Farhi." She looked around like she was trying to find a change of subject, not wanting to talk about him. "Hey! Truth or dare?"

I considered it, wondering what she would ask me either way. "Dare," I said, slowly.

She nodded her head towards the river, "Jump in."

"No way." I stopped walking and stepped away from her.

"I would."

"You're insane." I bit my lip and she laughed, "Can I at least take my shoes off?"

She shrugged, "Fine, I'm feeling generous."

I kicked my shoes off and bent down to remove my socks and roll up the bottom of my jeans. The river was grey and uninviting.

"Go on."

I took a deep breath and stepped in, "Oh, fuck!"

"Language."

"It's freezing!"

"What a shame." Her sarcasm was insulting, but also made her less of a stranger to me.

"Okay." I breathed, trying to get used to the feeling. The cold stung, but the feeling of mud and rocks between my toes was even more uncomfortable. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth."

"Sorry? I can't hear you, which one?"

She stepped forwards until she was above me on the bank, leaning over to talk to me. She opened her mouth and I reached down and splashed her with the water.

"Hey!" She jumped back.

"Karma."

"That's not what karma is. You should have just chosen truth."

"Fine. Truth for you... Farhi. Were you two just friends, or?"

"It's complicated." She saw my look. "I mean it. Like, publicly, maybe we were a couple, but I never actually liked him. It was- I can't really explain it without explaining a bunch of other stuff, and I can't do that."

"But you never liked him? Not even a little? Even with the fake relationship?"

"Boy's aren't really my thing."

"Oh? What is your thing?"

She studied me, climbing out of the river, my feet slipping on the dirt and grass. "That, Piper, is too many truths."

"Fine." I tied my laces together and hung my sneakers around my neck. "I choose truth."

"You have a best friend, too, didn't you ever like her?"

"Oh, come on." She couldn't be serious.

"Not even a little?" She echoed my teasing.

"What's it to you?"

"Is that a yes?"

I stopped walking. "I'm not a... lesbian." The last word was hushed, as if anyone could hear us.

She opened her mouth as if to say something, to carry on the joke or even fight me. Then she closed it. "Alright." It was a soft but reluctant acceptance that I didn't understand.

There was a lot that I didn't understand.


	3. But When I Look Back Now, That Summer Seemed To Last Forever

When I woke up, the house smelled so good, someone downstairs was baking banana bread. It's funny how banana bread doesn't really smell like bananas, or bread, but more like an idealized version of both.

I couldn't stop thinking about Alex. It had been a week since we went on a walk and I just kept thinking about how I had made her laugh multiple times, and each time felt irrationally proud of myself. How the cold thrill of the river on my feet was a shock, but the thrill of her company was even more so. We had only had an hour, a single hour with conversation stretched between us like chewing gum. At the end, she had gone into her house and I had gone into mine, and later that night we had both opened our windows and had our radios set to the same channel, so Jessies Girl spilled between the bedrooms.

I opened the curtains and stepped into the balcony. A moment later I realized that Alex was standing opposite, soaking in the cold fresh air with a cup of coffee between her hands. I was suddenly conscious of my bare legs under Cal's old band shirt that I had worn because it was too warm for pajamas, and how they were turning to gooseflesh. She looked composed, already dressed and her hair brushed. 

"Morning."

"Morning," I replied, my voice still low from sleep. The disparities between us made me feel, once again, inadequate.

"You listen to The Cult?" She asked, looking at the shirt.

"What? Oh, It's my brothers." I tugged at the bottom, pulling it down.

"They're releasing an album this year. A couple of singles are already out."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I'll play them for you." 

It felt like a promise of something more, as she carried her radio out as far as she could go, almost to the balcony, and turned the volume all the way up. I shut the door to my room and listened to her music, and how it felt strangely familiar from Cal listening to them, but also new because it was from Alex.

The song faded out and she turned the volume back down, looking at me for a reaction.

"It's deadly," I said, although I didn't really care for the song, I cared about the moment - I liked that she was nervous about what I thought, and I liked that she had made me listen to the song whether I wanted to or not because she had wanted me to hear it

She laughed. "Deadly." She mocked the way I spoke, the slang I used, but I didn't mind.

"Hey, play never-have-I-ever with me." I said, folding my legs under me.

"That's a kid's game."

"You're still living at your Mom's house, a kids game won't kill you. Besides... I want to get to know you, stranger."

"Fine." She held up five figures, palm towards me.

I copied, "You start."

"Never have I ever... got drunk."

I put my thumb down, studying her. I hadn't expected this girl, who called this a kids game and knew all this cool music and talked with such confidence to be so innocent. "Never have I ever done drugs. Excluding alcohol."

She raised her eyebrow and then put her own thumb down.

"You've done drugs but not drank?"

"My Mom kinda had a problem with alcohol- I don't know, I was too young to really get it and she's ok now, I think. She just didn't ever want me to drink because she didn't want me to end up like her, I guess. Me getting high was less personal - she was fine with me doing pot and things just... escalate, you know? Whatever. I've never gone to a school dance."

I put a second finger down. "I-"

"We don't have to talk about it."

"Ok, but no school dances? Why not?"

"It's lame. I would have gone to prom, but we came here instead."

"That sucks."

"It's fine. I'm sure I'm not missing much."

"No, probably not. Never have I ever got in a fight."

"Who do you think I am? I don't do my own dirty work." She moved so her legs were between the bars of the balcony, dangling. "I have never... broken a bone."

I put a third finger down. "Have you done anything?"

"You're just asking the wrong questions, babe."

The babe caught like a snag in my brain - no one had ever called me that. Or maybe someone had tried, but not like that, not casually. 

"I've never slept with anyone," I admitted.

Finally, she put a second finger down. "Have you ever kissed a boy?"

"Is that your question."

"Sure, but I've done it." She put another finger down.

"So have I." 

"Have you ever kissed a girl?"

I ignored her. "It's my turn."

"I've done that too. You were asking what I've done, so... c'mon, have you?"

"Like, properly?"

She shrugged, "At all."

I took a deep breath, watched as she put her own finger down with ease. Then I copied. 

"You have?"

"Just a friend. We were ten, and we made a dance routine - you know like kids do. We danced to that Queen song: Crazy Little Thing Called Love." This was the memory I had refused to think about the other day. "We had roles. I was the boy and Polly was the girl, and Polly- she was so pretty when we were little. She still is, but she was, I don't know. She had boobs at like ten and I looked like a mess and she looked like a princess and I'm not like that- I'm not, but it was for the song, you know?"

Alex blinked slowly. "So when you said you weren't-"

"I'm not!"

"You still remember it."

"It was kind of my first kiss, but it wasn't real. Yours was real, right? That's-"

"Whatever."

"What do you mean?"

"You're 'not like that'." She held her fingers up as air-quotes. "I get it."

"Alex, what?" There was something to her tone that I didn't understand, the same quality to her voice that she had when she had told me 'alright' in the woods. Like she was hiding something from me that I should comprehend, but couldn't.

She stood up. "I have to go."

"Where?"

"Does it matter?"

I hated that her tone shifted like that, as easy as the weather, and I hated even more how much it affected me. 

I watched her leave, thinking about the summer of 1979 when I was ten, and that first kiss that wasn't really my first kiss. I still remembered the straps of Polly's dress, her bra - she had been the first girl in our class to get one - the strawberry lip gloss she had bought from the mall with her pocket money. She had her Mom's blush plastered on her cheeks; she should have looked like a clown, as every ten-year-old does in stolen makeup. I don't know, maybe she did look like an idiot, but I remember her being so beautiful.

The summer that I was thirteen, and I moved house, it was a blow to our friendship - from three houses away from each other to the town over. We still made time for each other, rode our bikes with wicker baskets on the front, went for picnics in the woods that separated us. Spent every weekend together at one house or another, or under the sun, or in a movie theatre or swimming pool or wherever we had the funds to go.

When I was sixteen, Polly moved away, I felt like a piece of me had moved to the other side of the country, chasing a job. We phoned every week, as we did for years, and I caught her life in short bursts and she transformed from the prettiest girl in a rural town to whoever she is now. We drifted apart as her accent shifted but we were still 'best friends forever'. She came back for summers, and I met Larry, learned to rollerblade. The 'best summer of my life' played out like a movie.

Then that summer. I was eighteen. Stuck in my hometown without my best friend, who didn't really have an excuse to come back anymore with her whole new life. Without even Larry, who no longer made the effort to see me. But then there was Alex, who I could make laugh, who played stupid rounds of truth games with me, trying to confess something to each other. I would have told her anything, had already told her things I wouldn't have admitted to anyone else. There was a part of her I hadn't unlocked yet: the 'alright', 'whatever'. Maybe the clue was in the casual way she had admitted to kissing girls, and I hadn't pushed it because I was too in my own head over who I had kissed, and why I had kissed them. Maybe it was just a friendly kiss, like me: lips on lips and no further because it's just kind and meaningless. The word 'lesbian' entered my mind and as soon as it did, I dismissed it. I didn't really want to consider that, for her or for me. She wasn't like that and I certainly wasn't. You had to be sure before accusing people of that sort of thing, before pointing fingers and praying that they weren't turned back at you. 

I guess I sort of knew that she didn't kiss girls as friends, and that was why she was so mad when I said I wasn't 'like that', she thought I was disgusted at her. But if she was gay then I had to decide my own stance on that, on whether I accept her - it wasn't fair not too, right? She was just a girl, like me, and she wasn't hurting anyone. Unless she liked me, which she might - the music, the walk, the getting changed with the curtains open, but then wasn't I the creep for noticing? Plus, I had invited her on the walk. I didn't want to hurt her, but I also didn't want to side with someone like that, in case other people think I'm like that, too.  
It didn't matter, anyway, because if she didn't say anything then I didn't have to decide. 

I suddenly wanted to know what my Mom would say. How would she act if someone accused me of liking Polly, beyond a joke? Or if she knew I was friends with a girl who liked girls? I wanted to belive my Mom was a good person, but I didn't know which response I believed was a good one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm Bella and I can't believe that 70 people have read this lol. Anyway, if you like it - leave a comment! It would mean the world to me. See you next week x


	4. I Gotta Be Cool, Relax

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW// mentions of sex - not sex scene, and not explicit but there is conversation about it so I thought I'd warn just in case. From "Guess what I did" from Polly until the end.
> 
> Also, for the purposes of the story, Warren (Crazy-eyes) is a guy. Sorry :(

"Alex!" I called her name through the open windows. She was on her bed, writing something I couldn't see into a notebook.

She slammed the book shut, as though she was hiding something, and walked towards me. "Oh, hey!"

"It's a nice day. Would you want to go on a walk again?"

"Don't you have friends to hang out with or something?"

I didn't know how to tell her that I would rather just get to know her, that very quickly she had become the most important person in my life. "C'mon, let's go for a walk."

We walked downstairs, her in her house and me in mine, and I couldn't hear or see her but I could feel my steps mirrored.

"Let's walk to the town over," I said, directing us in that direction. "I used to spend all my time there."

She nodded, compliant, and we walked down my street on the sidewalk. There were chalk sketches in the middle of the quiet road: hopscotch and tic-tac-toe. My jeans clung to me in the heat - Alex was wearing a sleeveless top, probably more appropriate for the weather.

"What were you writing?" I asked.

"What?" 

"In your room. You slammed it shut pretty fast when I called you."

"Oh, I'm making a photo album. I miss my friends so I got a bunch of photos I'd taken of them developed/"

"That's so cute. I wouldn't have pinned you for a photographer."

"Well, I am. I have a film camera with color film."

I stopped walking and posed. "Take a photo of me."

"I... I have."

"What?"

"Just a couple."

"When? How did I not know?"

"I like candid shots." She started walking again, away from me.

I sped up to catch her, "Can I see them?"

"Maybe."

"But they're of me!"

"But I took them."

"Unless they're like of me getting changed, then we're good."

"You close your curtains when you get changed," she said, too fast, then looked away. "I mean, you probably do, I don't know."

"You don't," I replied, as easily as she had.

"Stalker." She muttered, just loud enough for me to hear it.

"Coming from the girl who takes photos of me in my room, secretly."

"In my defense-" She started. "...I have none."

"Well, I'll forgive you, if you let me see them."

"We'll see."

We walked around the edge of town, skirting the people and the shops, taking the high road of sticky tarmac over the winding streets.

"Look, you ever read that book by Oscar Wilde?" She asked.

"I've heard of him."

"He had this book caked The Picture Of Dorian Gray. And, at the start this guy Basil paints a portrait of Dorian-"

"-He paints the picture of Dorian Gray."

"Exactly. But he won't display it in a museum, because it's 'too much of himself'. Even though its of Dorian, it's too personal to him, you know?"

"I get it." I didn't, but I wanted her to keep talking.

"In that, of course, it was because he was in love with him, but, you know, my point still stands."

I thought for a moment, "Wasn't this like in the nineteenth century."

"Yeah."

"But like, wasn't being gay illegal."

"Being gay is still illegal, Piper."

"I mean like properly illegal, like people know about it now. They didn't really know about it then?"

She laughed, "They didn't know about it? Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for it."

"Wait, really?"

"Yup."

"I was always told he was imprisoned for something really bad."

"Yeah - hooking up with a guy."

"Oh."

She didn't look at me.

"Should I read it?" I asked.

"Sure." 

We walked in silence. The road was empty, no one coming in or out of the time, so we walked either side of the white lines, the sun burning through our clothes. Her shoulders were red, with white lines where the shirt straps had been. She moved them down her arms, turning the shirt strapless, and the space where they used to be stood out. It felt like seeing a little too much of her.

As soon as we got home, I tried to find the book. Dad found me in his office, up on the white kitchen ladder.

"What are you doing?" He asked. 

"Hey, Dad. Why was Oscar Wilde imprisoned?"

He paused. "He was having... inappropriate relationships with men."

"Huh." Inappropriate relationships.

"Why?"

"Do we have his book? The picture of... someone."

"Dorian Gray." He finished. "I do. Why are you looking for it, honey?"

"Oh, someone recommended it."

"Who?"

I thought fast. "Larry. Larry Bloom."

"Oh, yes, he's a... good kid. Just be careful announcing stuff like that."

"Why, wasn't he some literary genius?"

"Yes. Among other things."

He found the book, its pages still smelling new and unread. A book he must have owned for years, but never dare read. It was smaller than I had imagined - a novella.

I went back upstairs, found Alex in her room with her hair tied up out of the way of the heat. I wanted to talk to her, but I spent too long just watching her, the way she moved. Thinking about how she had photos of me, taken without me noticing. 

"I found that Oscar Wilde book," I said, finally.

She seemed caught off guard, which she rarely was. "Oh."

"I haven't started it yet. But I have it."

"You don't have to read it."

"I will."

She nodded. "ok, I'm not- The Basil and Dorian thing was just about the photos. Not us."

"Sure." I smiled at her. 

"Okay." She looked around. "I should go."

And then she was gone, scared that somehow this book I had would reveal everything.

-

It was Sunday, and it was my turn to call Polly. 

"Heyyyy," She stretched out the word, sort of asking if I was still upset.

"Hey, Polly. Do you remember when we made a dance to that Queen song when we were ten? Crazy Little Thing Called Love?"

"Maybe? Oh! Yes, yes I do. I made you be the boy." She laughed.

"Yeah." 

Still laughing, she asked, "Why? You want to remake it?"

"I just... I just heard it on the radio the other day." It wasn't technically a lie.

"Huh. Yeah."

I pulled the cord and sat down in the living room chair, cross-legged. Here's what I actually wanted to say: "I think that my new neighbour might be..." I lowered my voice, almost a whisper into the phone, "A lesbian."

"Really?"

"Yeah." I swallowed.

"That sucks."

"Why?" Suddenly, I felt weirdly defensive.

"For her, I mean. You're in fuck-nowhere - did she come from New York or something? Small towns are brutal. I mean Cali isn't great, but its a hell of a lot better than there."

"Wait, you know people, there? Like," My voice lowered again. "Gay people?"

"Sorta. Not openly, but a couple of my friends are dating - their parents don't know, obviously, but I do."

"And?"

"And what, Piper? Who cares. It's not my business."

"Yeah. Who cares."

"How's your summer been?" She asked, switching the subject.

"Pretty good. I've seen a few people. I guess we're friends, but they're not you."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault I miss you. Oh, and I got a polaroid camera, so I've taken a bunch of photos - pretty things like sunsets, or shots of the people I hand out with, or Cal." Not like Alex was taking photos. Not without their permission. 

"Guess what I did?"

"What?"

"I fucked Pete." I could hear her grin over the phone.

"Oh." I hated talking about sex with her, I hated this widening gap between us - ever since last year, when she had got with her then-boyfriend and left me still a virgin half the country away. 

"You don't sound happy for me."

"I am." I just didn't know what to say, how to empathise with something I hadn't done. Especially as it was such a landmark, and I felt like I was supposed to have done it by now, and I hadn't. It made me feel immature. "How was it?"

"Good, I guess? I really like him."

"Did he-" I didn't know how to ask. What was too much information? 

"Like go down on me? Yeah, actually. So he's a gentleman, there's that."

"Oh. And did you-"

"I mean, yeah, but not in a good way, you know?"

"I don't know."

She laughed. 

"Are you like, dating now?"

"No. We're just... friends, I guess."

"He's not one of the gay ones, then?" I tried a joke

"No. Definitely not." She said, emphatically.

I looked out of the window, mindlessly, and out of nowhere met Warren's eyes.

"Holy shit." I said, into the phone, maintaining eye contact with him. "I have to go."

"What. Why?"

"Warren is outside my window."

And then, despite her protests, I hung up and walked to my front door.

Two years ago, Warren was my boyfriend. Ten years before that, he had also been my boyfriend. Age six and sixteen, we had found each other (with a gap in between). 

He was there when I walked out of my house. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm living with my uncle for a bit. Family drama, you know? He lives, uh-" He gestured to a house about mid-way through the street.

"Oh. I was just thinking about you earlier."

"Really? What about me?" There was an edge of excitement to his tone.

"Only bad things." I walked out into the street to meet him, shutting my door behind me.

"Yeah, I probably deserved that." He put his hands up, pulled at his hair, the way he had always done when nervous. "I'm sorry. I did bad."

I shrugged. "I'm over it."

"You were my first love, you know? In elementary, I was in love with you. In love! Or I thought I was, and I thought I still was ten years later. So when you liked me back I thought it was destiny! But... but." He looked at his feet. "I shouldn't have kissed her."

"I wasn't really thinking bad things earlier," I admitted.

"Really?"Again, that excitement.

"I was thinking that you were my first proper kiss." I remembered so clearly what he had tasted like. I hadn't disliked kissing him, not really, I just hadn't realised that I was meant to like it.

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"Maybe, uh, maybe we could be friends again this summer, then? Please, Piper."

"I'd like that." I had missed his energy. Maybe, I thought, I had never actually liked him, I had just liked that he had liked me with such unwavering emotion. And then he cheated. 

-

That night, I started The Picture of Dorian Gray. Lying, fully clothed, on top of my bed, I opened it to the first page. The text was meandering, seeing how many words it could fit into a single sentence until it burst. I found the part that Alex had been talking about, a few pages in. How the portrait is not of him, but still him. She had put too much of herself into the pictures, of how she saw me. I thought I understood, a little, but not really. If anything, didn't they show too much of me, caught unawares? Unlike Dorian, I had no idea that I was being captured.


	5. It Drives You Crazy, Getting  Old

It had been a few days since we talked, maybe four. Had I been avoiding her? I don't know, I had been busy - I had seen this girl from school one day, I had gone shopping with Cal, seen my Grandma. I was halfway through Dorian Gray, and even I saw that Basil was hopelessly in love with Dorian. But that wasn't us. 

She was on her balcony though, one morning, and I couldn't just see her sitting there with her book and not say anything. I waved at her, shy, and she responded immediately. Maybe she hadn't been reading, maybe she had been watching me with one eye.

"So, you won't show me the pictures..." I started.

"No way."

"-Okay! Okay! So here's mine."

"What?"

"They're not creepy photos of you. But they are photo's that I have taken. I can't expect you to show me your work without showing you mine first." I held out a pile of pictures between my fingertips, trying to contain them so as not to drop any while passing them.

She leaned over the edge, and her fingers caught the other end. I held my breath as they bridged the gap between us. "You didn't mention them before."

"Well they're taken with the subject's permission, so it didn't seem relevant."

"Hey!" She rolled her eyes at me. 

I watched as she paged through them, desperately wanting her to like them for reasons I didn't fully understand. 

She held up one of Cal posing underneath a 'no trespassing' sign outside an unused barn. "Did you actually tresspass?"

"...No."

"Coward."

"I'm not a coward," I complained. 

"It's not an insult, you just have to accept it."

"Okay, but I lost never-have-I-ever."

"You were asking the wrong questions."

"Sure." I could feel this tension rising between us, because what were the right questions?

She looked like she was about to respond, and then her head snapped as her Mom called her from inside.

"Shoot." 

I hadn't expected her to go so fast, so I had no response as she left her room, putting my photos on her desk. I didn't even have time to ask for them back.

-

The next morning there was a brown paper envelope on the table, with a ladle with 'Piper' written on top in blurry sharpie.

I picked it up, "What's this?"

"I don't know." Mom walked out of the kitchen. "It was on the doorstep."

I turned it upside down and shook it. Something moved within it - paper, maybe? I carried it back upstairs carefully, forgetting what I had originally gone downstairs for. I didn't recognize the handwriting, so it wasn't Polly or Larry. 

I set them down on my desk. Inside, were my photos back. No note, just the pictures I had given to Alex, and she had decided to deliver them back in a spymaster sort of way. It was a little anticlimactic, to be honest.

But then, underneath, there were photo's that definitely wasn't mine: I picked the first one up, and the light flashed off it. It was of me. The camera was aimed at the back of my head, but you could see my face in the mirror. I was wearing makeup, and I remembered the moment, captured without my knowing - getting dressed up to meet someone for coffee; I picked up another, also of me, curled up against the rails of the balcony, lost in a book. My face was mostly turned towards the book, but there was something so vulnerable about seeing myself so unaware; there was another one, taken from her house of my front door, with me confronting Warren; the final one seemed to be taken weeks ago, maybe before we even talked for the first time, and I was lying on my bedroom floor, eyes closed, almost asleep. 

These were the photos that were so much of her that she couldn't share them, and yet it was me being exposed. It was worse than pictures of me getting changed, I was Dorian, and my immortality was laid out in front of me. It was almost frightening. 

I turned around, wondering if she was watching me even now, looking as I showed all my feelings clearly on my face. I turned around and she was there, and we made eye contact.

"I'm sorry, I-" It was the most nervous I'd heard her.

"I have a question," I said.

She nodded, tight-lipped. "Okay."

"When you- when you said that you had kissed a girl. It wasn't like ten-year-olds making a dance routine, right?"

"No. It wasn't."

"So..." I looked away.

"Whatever you're thinking, Pipes-" This was the first time she'd called me by my nickname. "You're probably right."

"Alright."

"Alright?" She pushed her hair back. "Alright? What does that mean?"

"What did it mean when you ended our conversation with and left me in the dark?"

"It means that I like girls, and you know that even if you don't want to admit it." There it was. She was right, I had known.

"Does your Mom know?" 

She shrugged, "That's partly why we moved."

"I thought she got a job or something?"

"I mean, she did, but, like, she applied to one here because she wanted me out of that town. She caught me-" She took a deep breath, didn't continue.

"I'm sorry."

"It's just how it is, you know?"

"It shouldn't be."

"Do you really think that?"

"I'm not sure, but it won't help you to tell you it's wrong."

"Thank you."

I shrugged. "I'm your only friend, now, right? It would suck for this to change that."

"I guess you are." There was so much relief on her face.

"Do you want to, like, go for a walk?"

When we were out on the street, she took the lead for the first time. "I want to go up your boxing day hill."

"Are you ready for that level of commitment?"

"You know my biggest secret now, Piper. I think I can handle a hill."

"What, that you smoked pot a couple of times? I mean I know it's illegal but possession is most of the law so I don't think they'd enforce it."

"That's not a chance I'm willing to take."

We climbed the fence as we had before, walked the dirt-path across the field, ignoring the sheep. I think by then, too much had been said, that couldn't be unsaid.

"it's your turn," She told me.

"My turn for what?"

"Deepest secret."

"I don't have one."

"Really?"

"I am an open book, Alex."

She gave me a look like she didn't believe me but still nodded. "Alright."

"Wait." I figured something out. "So when you said you were publicly with that guy - your best friend. That was like, a cover-up."

"Yeah. Obviously."

"How did that work?"

"So, uh, I was not going around telling everyone that I fancy girls, right? So, instead, I told them that I liked Fahri, who was sort of the resident dealer, but that's another problem. He was a footballer, and so I figured I would never have a chance with him, so it was safe to pick him to have a crush on. Anyway, I'm at some party and I walk into a room and there is fucking Fahri, making out with a guy in his friend's parents' bedroom. So, the next day, in school, I ask him out. He's like 'but you saw me...?' and I came out to him. Say that I'll cover for him if he covers for me. So we dated, and it all worked out." I liked the way she told stories, the emphasis she placed on certain words.

"That's hilarious."

"I know, right? And we were like the IT couple, too. I would wear his jacket everywhere and all that shit."

"But you got caught with a girl."

"Yeah. That was..."

"You don't have to tell me anything you're not comfortable with."

"Tell me something about you, first."

"Okay, so you took a photo of me talking to a guy outside my front door." She nodded, "That was Warren. We dated, uh, two years ago? I was sixteen. But we also dated the first year of elementary school, and he asked me out when I was eleven but I refused. Basically, we had history. When we were dating, he told me we were soulmates, and that I was 'the one'. At one point he bought me a promise ring and said we'd be married someday. He was kind of... obsessive. I really thought he loved me, I mean I thought he loved me far more than I loved him, but I liked being the object of his attention. Then he cheated on me, and I was upset, but I was more upset about the breach of loyalty than I was actually jealous of her. I don't know, I broke up with him for cheating but I think it was really just an excuse because I didn't want to be with him."

"You weren't really into him?"

"No? I don't know, he's been the only real relationship I had, and so I sort of assumed that my feelings for him were how everyone felt about their boyfriends. The more I think about it, though, it was just fun and I enjoyed his affection but it wasn't love."

"Have you ever been in love." She looked me dead in the eyes as she asked it."

"I don't know." I looked away, "Have you?"

"Not yet. No one's been worth it yet."

"I love Polly, but no like that."

"You sure that it's not like that?" She teased.

"Yes. What do you even mean? Of course not!"

"Okay, okay."

"We're best friends."

"I was kidding, come on."

"Well, it's not funny."

She rolled her eyes. "Calm down, Pipes."

"Fine. So you've never been in love - you didn't love the girl?"

"No way. Sylvia was kinda crazy."

"That's rude."

"Kind of true, though. I mean she fucking attacked this girl because I-" She stopped. 

"You what?"

"Nothing. It was a complicated relationship."

I watched her, trying to second-guess what she wasn’t telling me, what she had done to warrant the attack of another girl - or if it was unwarranted and Alex was right. 

Even at the start, see, I didn’t trust her. When I later found out that she had cheated, which meant the attack was ridiculous but not entirely without reason, I wasn’t surprised. Alex was many things, but loyalty was never at the top of that list.


	6. Vanity, Insecurity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW - mention of AIDS - if you don't want to read that, skip from "What happened, Honey?" - her dad, to "Do you think its a choice? homosexuality" - Alex. If you need anything else tagging just let me know :)

It was sunset. It had been a hot day, and it was still hot even as the sky got dark. Me and Alex were out on our balconies, talking as if we were old friends and hadn't only met a month ago.

"Remember I talked about Larry?" I said.

"Sure."

"I told him I used to like him. A couple of weeks ago."

"How did it go?"

"Anticlimactic."

"Oh?" 

"He said his girlfriend dumped him, and he had liked me too. He asked if it was too late."

"I don't know, Pipes, sounds kind of climactic to me."

"Maybe." I leaned backwards, resting on my palms, "I guess I expected to feel all these emotions and they never came. Maybe I didn't actually like him."

"But you said-"

"I know. I thought he was so cool, I wanted to be his friend, and I wanted him to like me so badly I got confused. I thought that I should like him, and I convinced myself that I did."

"So, If you didn't like him," Alex said slowly, "And you didn't like Warren... who did you like?"

"I don't know. No-one. Maybe I just, haven't?" I was frustrated at myself.

"Sure." She picked up the book that she'd been reading, unfolded the corner of the page.

"You've liked people, even if you haven't loved them, right?"

"Obviously."

"So how would I know? I'm not sure anymore."

She rolled her eyes. "You would know."

"I thought I did. Now I- I should feel more, right?"

"Probably. I don't know how you feel."

"Then what's wrong with me?"

She put her book back down again, looked me up and down, clearly biting her words back.

"Just say it, Alex!"

"There's nothing wrong with you. I promise."

"How are you so sure?"

"Because, I- nevermind." She shook her head, dispelling the thought.

"Tell me what you're thinking."

"You don't want to hear it."

"Sure I do."

"No, Piper, you don't."

I stood up. "Whatever."

"Piper-"

"What's the point in staying if you won't talk to me." I walked off, where she couldn't follow. Maybe I knew what she was saying, but I couldn''t face it.

I kept walking, through my house and out into the woods. I kept walking, until I had looped all the way back to my house, which is what I had planned, and yet I wasn't content because I was still thinking. I wanted to walk until my feet hurt, until holes were rubbed into my socks. I wanted my head to empty of thoughts like a deflated balloon. I don't even know why I was mad, or who I was mad at. Myself: for letting all of this overwhelm me, and for not feeling the things I was meant to feel? Or Alex: for questioning me? Or Larry: for finally doing the thing I had been waiting for him to do, and suddenly I didn't want it?

I walked until I was crying, clutching at my face with my hands to try and stop it. All of this emotion was coming out of me, from placed I didn't know existed. I was overwhelmed by my own head, by everything that was suggested to me that I refused to face. I wanted out. 

Instead I walked home, exausted.

I found my dad in the living room, reading something. He saw my face, rubbed red, the weight of my arms, all the emotions I had tried to ignore spilled out. 

"Do you want a cup of tea?" He asked, gently but also commanding. He knew I was a kid again, that I needed to be told to look after myself.

I followed him to the kitchen like a shadow, speechless, and watched him heat the water and fetch a teabag. I wanted to be obnoxious, to hate that I still needed him, as a legal adult I didn't want to want him. But my bravado was fake.

"What happened, honey?" He brought me the drink in my favorite mug. I sat on the counter and swung my legs listlessly.

"I don't want to talk. You talk."

"About what?"

"Anything."

"Well, I suppose, I was reading about that Gay-Related Immune Deficiency and the research on that. They think this is the beginning of the end of the crisis. Lots of research is happening. They understand a lot more, now."

"Dad... what would you say id, like, Cal was gay?"

"Cal has a girlfriend."

"I know, but what if?"

"He's still my child. I wouldn't want it for him, of course-"

"Why?"

"It's hard. To hide yourself, and have people hate your relationship. My love for him is unconditional, but not everyone's is. He would lose friends, jobs, he wouldn't be able to get married, have a relationship. Hate the sin and love the sinner, they say, but mostly I love him too much to wish all that upon him."

"And me?" He gave me a look, curious. "I'm not. I'm just curious."

"I love you too, Pipes."

"I know." I avoided his eyes. 

-

I found Alex, still on the balcony, unmoved in the hours I had been gone. 

"I talked to my dad," I said.

She didn't look up, "About?"

"I don't know. Things. She said they're coming close to stopping GRID."

"GRID?" She repeated the acronym, slowly.

"Gay-Related Immune Deficiency."

"I don't know what that is."

"Like, AIDS."

She finally looked at me. "You call it fucking 'Gay-related'? You know, my Mom's friend had it. She's not gay, she just had sex with some guy. Because that's how it fucking works."

"It's just a name, Alex. I didn't pick it."

"Can I ask you something, Piper?" It didn't sound like a request.

"Sure."

She stood up, looked me dead in the eyes. "Do you think it's a choice? Homosexuality?"

"I mean, I guess." I didn't like the pressure of eye contact.

"Really? You could just choose to like girls, right now?"

"Yeah, I mean, I don't want to."

"No, but you could. You could stand there and choose to have a crush on me?"

"On you? Yeah, I could."

"Then do it."

"Alex-"

"I'm serious. If you think its a choice then fall in love with me, right here."

"I mean, you get changed with the curtains open, and have like really nice skin and you took those pictures of me and likened it to Dorian Gray, where he is clearly in love with the man he paints, and I've told you everything, like, I guess I could see us together, if I was like that. I had this dream-" I stopped myself.

"A dream?"

"Nevermind. I'm just proving a point." I looked away, starting pacing along the balcony.

"Piper." Her voice was so gentle, none of the anger from before."

"I don't want to be gay." I told her.

"I know." I could feel her wanting to do something, to take my hand and comfort me, but couldn't.

-

There was a new dynamic between Alex and I, that June, as the sickly-sweet heat crept in and we shared our time. We played games in the street, went to R rated movies that I could see legally for the first time, drunk melted popsicles around the shady back of the ice-cream parlor. We were more comfortable together now, I would mention something innocent and she would smile at me like we shared this secret and I would suddenly see a double-meaning that I had not meant to convey. I hated the implications of that smile, but I liked the way that it confirmed our friendship.

She wore practically nothing: jean shorts and tank tops and almost see through white dresses. Her hair was practically never down, and she would put it up with whatever she had available - scrunchies and bandanas and pencils. I would tease her and she would laugh good-naturedly and flash that smile.

I played her that song, the crowded house single I had listened to at the start of summer, the holiday that I had envisioned.

She listened to it all the way through before saying "I don't get it."

I had expected her to love it, like me. "What do you mean?"

"Don't dream what's over?"

"I-" I didn't have an answer. "It?"

"But what is it?"

"I don't know, does it matter?"

"It matters to me. How do you not know the context of a song and still connect to it."

"You know the context to all your songs?"

"Sure I do."

"Oh, okay."

"Don't call my bluff, Pipes. You'll lose."

"I think it's about a breakup." I said. "It's him being scared of the relationship being over and not knowing what to do with himself."

She considered it. "You're probably right. There are a lot of breakup songs. I don't mind them, but I like songs that tell a story - I like it when they feel real."

"And breakup songs don't tell a story? There's a hole in the roof of his car, Alex."

"Right, but it's too abstract for me, too ambiguous. I like to relate to songs, and I've never had a crush on a guy, or a breakup with one that actually hurt."

"There are songs about girls, too."

"Men don't get it." She said, frimly.

I laughed.

"Seriously, though, Pipes." She held my gaze, "Thank you for not hating me."

"I couldn't hate you if I tried." I replied, so honest it scorched my throat.

"I have a question."

"Anything."

"The other day, when you said- you mentioned a dream?"

"It was nothing." I said it too fast to be believable.

She looked at me, saw right through me. "Alright."

"I mean," I wanted to explain myself. "Dreams don't mean anything."

"Dreams mean everything. Dreams are your subconscious processing. If I dreamed, say, of you? It would mean I was thinking about you."

"Of course you're thinking about me. We're friends, I see you almost every day."

"So does that mean you dreamed of me?"

"You were in my dream. That's different from dreaming about you."

"Really?"

"Shut up."

"What did we do in your dream?"

"Nothing."

"We did nothing?"

"Okay, we went on a walk. Like we always do."

"That's not exactly nothing."

"Alex, will you quit it." I snapped. "Why are you even asking me all these questions."

"I want to know who you are."

"You do. Better than a lot of people, actually."

"Do you think-" She paused. "Do you think there's much difference between knowing someone and loving someone?"

I thought about it. "No. I think you can't do either without the other."

"You can't know someone without loving them?"

I thought of Polly, how she felt like a part of me, and I shook my head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, it's my birthday tomorrow!!


	7. Does it make you freak out?

"That Larry called again this morning." Mom told me.

"He did?" I looked up from my toast.

"Indeed he did. He seems to like you a lot."

I shrugged.

"Is he the one who told you to read Oscar Wilde?" Dad asked.

"Yeah."

He gave Mom a meaningful look. "I'm not so sure he likes Piper, then."

"He had a girlfriend until the start of quarantine." I pointed out.

"They broke up?"

"She dumped him."

"And now he's calling every week?" Mom asked, amused.

"We're friends."

"Boys are always looking for something."

Suddenly agitated, I got up. "I'm going to call him back."

"It's like you don't even want a boyfriend, sometimes, Piper." Mom sighed.

That struck a chord somewhere. I walked over to the phone and rang him.

It didn't take long for him to pick up. "Hey, Pipes!"

"You were right," I said, firmly, hating myself the whole time. "Last year this would have been something different."

"This?"

I paused, trying to convince myself that this was something I wanted, "Us."

"Then why not?" Predictably, he asked.

"I don't know, we don't see each other that often?" 

"I'd like to."

"Yeah, I'd like to see you too." Somehow, we were starting to flirt, and it dawned on me that it was so much more uncomfortable than when Alex would jokingly half-flirt with me, and I cared so much less about whether he liked me. But I pushed the thought down. "So?"

"So, what?"

"Aren't you going to ask me out?"

"Would you say yes?"

"Maybe."

"Piper Chapman: do you want to be my girlfriend."

I swallowed, my parent's eyes on me. "I do." The vow slipped out of me, scaring me.

And that was that. I liked boys. I liked Larry. I was dating Larry.

Upstairs, after the call had ended, I found Alex once more on her balcony and sat down a couple of meters from her.

"I have to tell you something," I said.

"Better or worse than-"

"-I'm dating Larry." I cut her off, not in the mood for games.

"What?"

"He called and I- It makes things easier."

"But you said you didn't like him?"

"I didn't."

It was a cold day, for summer, but she was still in a t-shirt in contrast to me bundled in an old sweater. It was even colder with the weight of my decision, with the way she was looking at me as though I had somehow betrayed her.

"How does it feel?" Her tone was bitter. "You're his."

"It's not that different. It's not like it's serious. I just-"

"You just don't want anyone to think you're a lesbian?"

It started raining. As if on cue. As if that word - the one neither of us had actually said aloud before - triggered the rainfall that threatened to soak us in minutes.

"Not to mention you're messing him around." She added.

"His girlfriend just broke up with him. They were dating for a year and a half. If anything, he's messing me around."

"Right. Because it's his fault that you don't like boys."

"I do-"

"Do you fucking hear yourself?" She interrupted me, standing up with all the rain coming down between us as if caused by her anger. "You were the first person I came out to voluntarily and you accept me and flirt with me and then as soon as I- as soon as anything starts you turn around and date whoever will take you because god-fucking-forbid you be seen as like me."

"Nobody thought I was like you! You are the only person that thought I was fucked up!"

The 'fucked up' part broke her. She turned around and went into her room, hair dripping as it spun, and slammed her french doors so hard they shook. And then, for maybe the first time since she'd been there, she closed her curtains and shut me out.

I didn't feel like I'd just entered a relationship; I felt like I'd just left one. I still committed to me and Larry, though, It would be rude not to. I found all the pictures of us, and receipts from days out together, and bus ticket stubs from the pockets of coats I barely wore. I convinced myself that I really did like him, and thought back to when we missed the bus home and had to run across town to catch it at the next stop. He had grabbed my hand in his, pulled me down the road. We were immortal in that moment, faster than I've ever run and with no real consequences if we didn't make it, but I wanted to be running with him and Polly and with our sneakers catching fire on the tarmac made sticky by the sun and my backpack bouncing up and down on my back.

I hadn't been with Warren yet, in that memory, I hadn't even thought about liking Larry in any way than friends, but to me, that moment defined that summer. Us running together, running home hand in hand. I don't know if he'd grabbed Polly with his other hand, but I remember her laughing. In the end, we'd made it onto the bus, panting, and gave the driver our passes with hands that had dirt under the nails and friendship rings made of twists of paper.

And yet, at the same time, as I tried to drown in all of our good memories of that golden sunny time when I told him every secret I had, when I would have given anything for us to stay friends forever... I couldn't help but think about Alex's closed curtains. I was shut out, and I hated it. I knew it was my fault, and perhaps I could apologize just enough that, in her loneliness, I would be forgiven. But I didn't want to apologize because that would be too close to admitting something I refused to admit. I was a coward, and I was terrified of the possibility that I had wanted my dreams to come true.

Her curtains weren't thick - when it was dark out and she had her bedroom lights in, I could see her shadow moving around and I wanted, so much, to reach out to her and let her know that I was unhappy. That I missed her. That I was meant to be happy and I felt so fucking lonely. There was some indescribable emotion I found myself wallowing in, watching that shadow, wanting her. I couldn't name it, couldn't put my finger on the urge. More than that, though, more than I missed her, I wanted her to miss me. I wanted her to be upset and destroyed over this. I wanted her to slip out and take another photo of me without my knowledge, because she needed something to hold on to.

The next morning it was still raining. And Alex still wouldn't talk to me.

It was my and Polly's call that day. Sunday. So I was just waiting around for that, waiting for her to get me out of my head. I missed her so much, but it struck me that this aching loss of my best friend had only really hit when Alex had locked me out. That made me feel stupid, putting all my faith in one girl I just met, like I was momentarily choosing her over Polly.

Still, I waited patiently for her to call - waited as the clock ticked, playing with my hair trying not to think as the hands turned. 

At half-past three, the telephone rang, and to my relief, it was Polly's voice on the other side.

"Piper! Sorry I'm late I was running errands - how are you doing?"

"I'm good." I lie through my teeth. I wanted to tell her about Larry, and it felt like keeping something from her if I didn't, but I just couldn't.

"It's so weird not being there for summer." She laughed, "How are you surviving without me?"

"I'm not." It's a joke, it's all jokes, but there's also honesty in it.

"I bet you're baking or something like that." 

"I am." I admitted. I made cookies yesterday. "You could bake, if you wanted to, you know?"

She sighed, "I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because... I wouldn't eat it."

"What do you mean."

"There's just, like, a lot of sugar and-"

"That's bullshit." I lowered my voice - even at eighteen, I knew that Mom wouldn't approve of me swearing.

"It's just- it's worth more to me that I stay hot, you know?"

"You'll always be hot."

"You don't get it. You don't care."

"What do you mean I don't care?" All my anger from earlier, from Alex, was bubbling inside me again.

"I don't know, you wear borrowed clothes and no makeup and you still look really good, and I couldn't do that."

"You could."

"Well, I'm not going to."

I shook my head. I couldn't deal with her. "Stop it."

She didn't reply, and I could see her clear as day: biting her lip and pulling the phone cord around and around in her painted nails. As I pictured her, she started to annoy me, a wave of rising anger. Did she not see how she was insulting me? 

"I've gotta go," I said, all tight voiced.

"Where are you going?" She asked, brightly.

"My Mom wants the phone," I said the first lie that came into my head, trying to get off the line before this fluttery feeling in my fingers punched a hole in the wall. She was my best friend, but it was like we'd been friends so long she didn't care how her words were taken. I wasn't like hrr, wasn't as pretty as her, so I didn't care?

"Bye, Pipes. See you next week."

"Bye." I hung up and finally breathed out.

Maybe I just missed her, and pushing her away in anger was the only way of managing that. Or maybe I gave into her unthinkingness too many times and I had no patience left. Or maybe this was about Alex. 

When I was a kid, everyone told me I was a girl, and so I agreed with them, not because they were right or I knew gender enough to decide that I was on their side, even if it meant some things were lost to me; I agreed because I had no choice, because I was told it over and over until it became my identity - like my name, it was only mine to an extent. That's the thing about names: as much as you feel like they’re your own, they really belong to the people around you. I didn’t choose to be called Piper. I didn’t choose to be a girl. And yet that was how I defined myself, because you have to agree. You are not really afforded all that much power over your own identity. In my head, I think a part of me protested, felt like I was just not quite a girl in some aspects, but I had no alternative. I couldn’t wake up one day and be a boy - not that I wanted to be, the label of boy fit me even less, but perhaps there was freedom in having both available to me.

And now. Now I accept that I’m Piper and I’m a girl and I wouldn’t want to be anything different, now I knew I had to like boys. I had to make having a boyfriend, and eventually a husband, part of my identity, because I still didn’t have another option - I liked boys or I was ‘fucked up’. And then Alex had come along and presented me with another option, and maybe now I had a choice, and I wonder if, as a kid, I had been told I could be a boy, or, better still, not have a gender altogether, would I have taken it? How much would be different now? Here I was, rebelling again, and finally, there were people on my side and as soon as they offered me a hand I pushed them away - because I didn’t really want to like girls, did I? I was just fighting my identity. Again. I didn’t really want Alex to kiss me like she did in my dreams, I didn’t really want to change my identity like that.

Then again, maybe when someone - Alex - tried to tell me the opposite, insinuated that I had joined her, still without me choosing. Maybe I wanted to rebel against her, too, and it was easier for everyone to prove that I liked boys. One phone call. One phone call and I was perfectly heterosexual again. And immediately I lost my passion for it and regretted saying anything to Larry. Perhaps if I had dated Alex in my act of riot I wouldn’t want that anymore, either. But I hadn’t.

I just felt so, so, lost. I was about to be an adult, and I can’t even think that without feeling crazy - that wasn’t me, I’m not there yet. I’m not ready to go to NYU and lose my virginity and live all alone in a little apartment in a big city. I was still small, and stuck at home, like a kid grounded by their parents. I had Larry and Polly at the end of a phone call, loving me in some way that I reciprocated but couldn’t understand, and yet I felt alone. They didn’t get me. Surely, they didn’t have these thoughts. Polly liked Pete so easily, with the innocence of a girl who has not had to fight to find herself. She didn’t remember being ten and she hadn’t ever wanted to see me with my top off, to compare ourselves, just to see. She had kissed me, a ‘practice kiss’ that did nothing for her and everything for me. Larry didn’t call me up and tell me I was pretty and then go to sleep and dream about how it would feel to be with a boy - not even as a rebellion. 

I wanted to apologize to Alex, to try and explain that some of my anger was, in fact, jealousy. That she knew who she was and who she wanted. But I had pride, and I didn’t want to get close again if we were just going to fight again and lose each other once more.


	8. Trip down the road, walking you home

When I woke up it felt like the storm had passed. 

Stepping out, I didn't see her at first. I just took a deep breath, forgiving myself just a little. Then her eyes met mine. She was sitting on the floor of her bedroom with her balcony doors open, holding a mug of coffee and reading a book. 

"I'm sorry," I said with no hesitation.

She looked away, "Thank you."

"No, really. You're not fucked up Alex, you're perfect."

"And you?"

"I'm scared," I admitted.

"I like you, Piper, but I'm not just waiting for you while you change your mind a hundred times."

"I thought we were stuck together and you didn't have a choice." I tried to get her to smile.

"Clearly I do."

"Wait, Alex."

"What?" 

"You kissed me. That was the dream. You kissed me and I didn't want to wake up."

I don't know what reaction I expected, or wanted, but I didn't expect her to just nod. "I know."

"What do you mean?"

"You weren't exactly subtle. I knew what you dreamed about and you knew what I was meant by 'alright.'."

"I-"

"That's why I was mad when you turned around and got a boyfriend. I thought we-"

"We could what, exactly?"

"I don't know, I hoped you wouldn't freak out but of course you did."

"I don't know who I am anymore, Alex. And you've just, like, accepted it? You know who you are and I'm- I'm jealous."

She finally closed her book. "Really?"

I took a deep breath. "I am not who I thought I was, and I'm scared, and I'm sorry."

"You need to break up with that guy."

"You dated a boy for a year and a half."

"He knew what was going on."

I sighed. "We're going on a date today. It'll be the first time I see him this summer."

"Where are you going?"

"Just the diner in town. We've been there a few times as friends, I have fond memories there."

"Would it ruin it for him if you dumped him there, do you think?"

"I don't know. I mean, it's not like we've been together for ages and I'm spoiling a whole thing. I just said I'd date him because I was angry, and now I've fucked everything up."

"We all make mistakes." She acknowledged. "Thank you for your apology."

-

Larry knocked on the door. It was an unnecessary formality - he had been here so many times without asking, that it felt silly. On the other side, I counted down from five in my head, suddenly anxious that he would provide some romantic gesture like flowers and I would find out how much I meant to him, and be unable to reciprocate it. 

Thankfully, there were no flowers, just classic Larry with his hands inside the pockets of his grey jacket. I was a little overdressed, in an actual black dress that I had bought for some birthday party, but his look was appreciative. A younger me would have dreamt all night about that look he gave me, but I wasn't her and I struggled to contain the disgust I had at the way he seemed to suggest that my body looked like this for him. 

As we stepped into the street, I glanced up at Alex's bedroom window. She was there - of course, she was there, watching. In her hand was a camera, which I didn't see flash but was still confident that it had been used moments prior to capture my date. 

"Are you ok?" Larry asked, I guess he sensed my nervousness and the way I leaned away from him.

"Fine," I said, then amended. "Good. Really good."

He nodded, took a shaky breath. "You look nice."

"Oh. Yeah, I dressed up a bit."

"I should've-"

"-no, it's cool. It's just casual. We're friends."

"Friends?"

I was in a trap of my own making. "I mean, we have been friends for a while, even if we're not now, it's still comfortable, right?"

This was anything but comfortable for me, but he nodded again. "Yeah, totally. You're just Pipes from high school."

We got to the diner. Inside, it was too bright to be real - the colors were too saturated: red and white vinyl booths that seemed too clean for their regular use, it's like it was from one of my dreams, verging on the edge of imagined, except there was Larry instead of Alex, and my meeting is not clandestine but in broad summer daylight. 

He talked and I couldn't bring myself to pay full attention, and I couldn't stomach the meat from the burger I ordered (that he paid for), so instead I picked at salty fries, bit down on the lemon in my coke as if it were a self-inflicted punishment. This date was a self-inflicted punishment. But punishment for what?

"Piper?" I could read between the lines of how he said my name, 'are you even listening?'

"Yeah, I-" I looked up, into his eyes. I thought about how even the least attractive people had beautiful eyes. "You have really nice eyes," I said.

He blushed, which was weird, and gave me this feeling of achievement like I had some sort of control. Then, immediately, the guilt crept in - he liked me, he actually liked me, and all I could find to say was that everyone has nice eyes.

"Have you decided what you want to do next?" I asked him.

"I want to go into journalism," He replied, with no hint of embarrassment.

"Oh? What do you want to write about? You were never on the school newspaper or anything."

"Yeah, well, they just did sport and extra-curricular activities, and, uh, boring stuff like that."

"And you're planning on writing what, exactly, politics?" 

"Well, I guess, I'll write whatever I'll get paid for."

"What if that's sport."

"Then I'll learn how to write sport. This is my dream, Pipes."

"Right. Sorry."

"Don't you have a dream?"

"I don't know. Not really. Polly and I have come up with a bunch of business plans, and me and Alex-" I regretted it as soon as her name left my mouth. "Nevermind."

"Who?" 

"My new neighbor. We've been getting close. She's cool."

"Speaking of which," Thankfully, he changed the topic before it could go too far in a direction I couldn't explain. "I saw Warren on my way to you. He lives on your road now?"

"Oh. Yes, he does. We've spoken once."

Larry leaned forwards towards me, "He's such a douchebag, Pipes, don't talk to him."

"He's not-"

"Didn't he cheat on you."

"I've forgiven him."

"Why would you do that?"

"I don't know, it was a while ago. I'm not upset about it anymore - I don't care about him."

"You said you liked me a while ago."

"That's different."

"How?"

"Larry, do we have to get in a fight right now?" I contemplated just getting up and leaving. Not because it wasn't true, but because it was.

"No. Sorry." He relented. "So you and Polly are still close?"

"Aren't you?"

"No, not- not really. It kind of feels like she abandoned us, you know?"

"No." I did know. I knew that feeling of abandonment from my best friend all too well, but I wasn't about to talk shit about her to him.

"Okay, nevermind then." I could see him struggling to find a topic, anything that wouldn't offend me, and I wanted to relent, but I was also just a tiny bit sick of him. "you watch that, uh, Raising Arizona? It came out a couple of months ago, but I just saw it."

"No, sorry. Heard about it, but no."

"Right."

The waitress came by. "Need anything else?" she asked. 

"I think we're good," I said. 

We walked home together, Larry insisting on walking me all the way back to my house and through the door. I held his hand most of the way, feeling like this was some sort of elementary school date where hand-holding was the highest form of affection. Against my will, I pictured Polly and Pete, who were probably making out by now, on a beach somewhere. I was jealous of the way other people let go of their inhibitions. 

At the door, Larry moved as if to kiss me on the cheek, and I just hugged him. As awkward as it had been, I had missed him. It just took that date to realize what I had missed, was friendship. 

He walked off without looking back. I waited at the door, expecting him too.

When he was out of sight I knocked on Alex's door.

She was the one who opened it. Maybe she had been waiting for me to come back, watching the space between our houses for me. Maybe that was wishful thinking.

"How was your date?" She asked, with a smile. It wasn't genuine and I knew it.

"Is it rude to break up with someone less than a week after you agreed to be their girlfriend?"

"Yes." 

"He's just..." I sighed, following her up to her room. I hadn't been inside her house before, but it felt natural to be there.

She sat down on her bed with her back against the wall. "Not a woman?"

"No, no." I copied her, sitting next to her and looking around her room. "I just don't have the same feelings as I used to. It's been a while, and I tried to... rekindle something that's no longer there."

She turned to me, "Did you have fun, at least? As friends?"

"I guess. I just couldn't stop thinking about what he wanted from me, which wasn't what I wanted to do."

"It could be your excuse, you know. Call him up and say the date was so bad that you never want to do it again."

"That's too harsh."

"It's a little bit true."

"No, it's not. It's not his fault at all."

"So it's your fault?"

"It's just- stop twisting my words."

She laughed, and then moved closer to me, her face opposite mine. 

She opened her mouth as if to say something, and I stopped her- "You've smudged your eyeliner." I poked at her cheek and she went still.

"Yeah, I- I do that."

"Sorry, you were going to say something?"

"Nothing."


	9. We both got dreams but I'm not good at reaching mine

Sat on the swings, to the left of Larry, I twisted my hands together. We were in the kids park near his house in mid-afternoon, watching the kids play on the model pirate ship. I imagined a smaller version of Larry playing pirate there, his little hands grasping at the climbing wall holds. 

"Larry..." He looked at me as I said his name, with hope in his eyes that I knew I would crush.

"This isn't working."

"What do you- what you mean? Like you don't like the park?"

"Larry... Come on."

"No we're- I like you." He stressed the 'like'. I couldn't help feeling as if it mattered more to him that he liked me, rather than if I liked him.

"I know you do." But it's not reciprocated. Not enough, anyway. "I just think we're better as friends."

"So you're going to pay me back for the meal the other day, right? And the- uh- and you'll give me back my jacket?"

"If you want. Is that really what you're mad about?"

"No!" He stood up, leaving the swing to move back and forth in his wake. "Of course that's not what I'm mad about! Why would you say this?"

"I don't think we work as a couple, Larry, I just don't." I shrugged. "We're not- we don't work, okay?"

"What do you mean!?" He threw his arms up into the air, pissed. "Piper, it's been a week! You can't just back in and out of this relationship."

"Well, I can. I backed in, and you seemed to like that, and now I am backing out."

He looked me dead in the eyes. "Fuck you."

"That's not a particularly mature response." I noted.

"You're trying to break up with me!"

"I mean, I'd say I have broken up with you, but tense is pedantic."

"Fine! You have broken up with me!"

"You're very angry. Like you said: it's been a week, you can't be that emotionally invested. You're probably not even over that girl you were dating."

"Don't try and do that- that thing where you rationalize your bad decisions."

"And you're psychoanalsing me."

"I don't even know what that word means."

"Doesn't mean you can't do it."

He sighed. Sat back on the swing. "That's it, then? The entirety of our relationship."

"I guess. But! Hopefully not the entirety of our friendship."

"Sure, if thats- thats what you care about."

"Of course that's what I care about."

We both sat there, one swing each, thinking to ourselves. 

"So, should I go home?" I asked.

"Do what you want."

Slowly, I stood up. 

Turning back to him, I smiled. "I'll talk to you soon."

"Right." 

-

"I broke up with Larry." I said over the phone to Polly. I had told her last week that we had just gotten together.

"Oh. Why?"

"I didn't like him. I'm not sure-" I broke off.

"Sure of what?"

"I don't think I've ever been in love, Polly. And honestly, I'm not sure I've ever even had feelings for anyone."

"That's okay, though. You don't need to date some guy to be happy. You are going to thrive in life whatever happens."

"It's sweet of you to say that, but I want to feel love... I just haven't."

"Yet. You're eighteen, there's time."

"Did I just, like, miss out on the high school experience?"

"You dated Warren."

"I don't think I actually liked him, though."

"I think that might be part of the "High school experience"" I could hear her air-quotes.

"Maybe. I don't know." I pictured her. "I miss you so much, you know? I wish we could talk in person, and I want your advice on everything, but you're not here to give it."

"Whatever." I sighed, "Let me live vicariously through you. How's Pete?"

"Good. He's my boyfriend now, so that's- that's a thing."

"How do you feel about that?"

"I don't know. He's really sweet, which is nice. I'm not really used to guys being really sweet to me. You know he can drive and so he comes and picks me up from dates, and opens the door for me, and pays. He's a... gentleman, I guess?"

"Right."

"You know?" She said again and giggled.

"I suppose so. Larry paid and walked me home."

"But that didn't work for you."

"I just didn't like him like that. He was just friendly and it was weird."

"I always liked him. He was always fun, and honestly, he seemed like good boyfriend material I was rooting for you two." She paused. "But I totally support you breaking up with him if you weren't into it. I'd rather you be happy."

"Yeah."

"I just want you to be happy," Polly said, and she really must have meant it at that moment, even with whatever inner thoughts she hid from me.

"Me too." I wanted to communicate that I wanted her to be happy, in the same way. Maybe, though, I meant I wanted to be happy myself. No, I definitely did. I deserved to be happy. 

Perhaps there was something wrong with me, something unnatural in the way I dreamed about Alex, the tension that I felt drew me to her like a string wrapped first around her body, and then mine. Even as I sat with Larry on our date, I thought of the way she had taken a photo just as we left - I didn't see it, but I knew she had taken it, the way I knew lots of other things that I wouldn't let myself admit. 

That was the struggle of it all, the push and pull of what I was willing to admit.

-

Alex and I went on a walk, in tenuous peace.

"I like your jacket," She told me.

"You can have it," I said, immediately, without thinking. I think she could have asked me for anything and I probably would have agreed to it.

"You're acting like this is a date," She teased.

"It's not."

"Not at all?"

"No." She raised an eyebrow at me and I amended. "Have you ever even been on a date?"

"You know I dated a guy for a year and a half and you lasted what, a week?"

"You and Fahri went on dates?"

"He was my best friend, so we went to get food and go to movies and stuff, and I suppose you could call them dates since we were dating."

"I think you have to kiss for it to be a proper date." That was another 'rule' I held onto, to dismiss me and Larry and the diner because I wanted it to just be a mistake.

She scoffed. "We're not going to kiss."

"I know."

"Because you would freak out."

I had decided that I needed to embrace whatever me and Alex had going on this summer. "No, I won't."

"You would."

"Would not." I shot back, like a kid on a playground.

"Prove it." Ping-ponged words bounced back and forth between us, I had hit it into her court, and I knew from her eyes that she had let it off the board, but it didn't feel like a win.

"I-"

"I'm kidding. You don't really want that."

"How do you know what I want?"

"Piper, you have got to stop messing with me. I know you think that you are all on board now, but it's not fair to me, because it's not true."

"You don't-"

"-I know what you want." She interrupted. "Because you're acting like a damn stereotype."

"But..."

"It's not fair." She shook her head. "You're not being fair."

"I could prove you wrong, though." I insisted.

"I won't let you. Then, if I'm right, and you- it would kill me."

"I wouldn't do that to you."

"God, Pipes, you already have."

"I didn't mean to."

"Didn't mean to what? Tell me that you weren't like that' and 'fucked up'? Or when you got a boyfriend right after flirting with me? You admitted that that was you freaking out, and now you're being stubborn."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not mad. I'm just not letting you do that again."

"But if you're upset when I shut down and also upset when I'm open to it, then what am I supposed to do? What do you want?"

"I don't want to be here. I don't want to like you."

"What?" It stung.

"Whatever. I'm not mad." She kicked at a pebble with her shoe.

"You sure seem it," I said. "Do you want to go back?"

"No, it's fine, we're almost there, right?" 

I nodded. 'There' was the top of the hill we had been climbing, and it was in sight.

From the top of the hill, we had vantage across the whole town, the houses laid out at our feet like building blocks. For me, nostalgia rested in them all, sunk into the creases of the roads and the green grass contrasted with the slate-grey housetops. My childhood ran like a thread through it, this supercut of growing up on the asphalt streets, learning to ride a bike and suddenly getting the hang of it and flying down them, faster even than Cal, my Moms cooking with all the windows down so the smell fell out in waves, and my friends coming in to taste it, learning to drive in my uncle's old pick-up truck, and Polly coming home for a visit and driving around in it with the radio turned up as high as it would go.

I looked over at Alex, lying in the grass. she didn't have these memories in here, and wouldn't care if she left. 

I lay down next to her, the town spinning out of view until I could only see the clouds. I could feel her body next to mine, her arms outstretched like she was making a snow angel. She was a couple of meters from me, but as it did with our balconies, that meant I could reach out my hand and it would meet hers.

Painfully slowly, I lifted my arm up so my fingers were centimeters from hers, and she shifted to almost meet me, so close I could feel the electricity of her pulse, but not quite touching. Without turning my head to look at her, I moved until our fingers met. It wasn't like passing something from my room to hers, it was more deliberate: this slow, careful, skin slid over skin. I paused like that, feeling the callouses on her index fingers, still not looking at her. I had been wrong, her hands were not soft but a little rough, and I liked her more for it. She wasn't perfect. All of my focus was at my fingertips, all of my energy concentrated on the one spot where we met.

Deliberately, she took my hand in her own. It felt illegal, like breaking a million laws. We were quietly rebellious, lying on our backs in the grass. So we stayed like that.

And so I became Icarus. With Alex's warning in my ears, and the knowledge that she was right: I had, and would, freak out. She was a burning sun, and like a big red button in an empty room that you had been told not to press - all I wanted was to press it. I'd had a revelation, that perhaps I liked girls as I was meant to like boys, and this idea formed my wings - clumsy, inelegant wings that would melt away if I went too close to her, but that was all I wanted to do.

Something in her smile, that suggested we share a secret, her compliments that would sink into my skin, tanning me in adoration. The way she walked, the way she spoke, the way my heart flipped when she called my name. Building blocks to infatuation.

I just wanted to experience it, to see how it felt to be close to her, to know her like that. Secretly, I wanted to know how she tasted and where she put her hands when she kissed and when her breathing sounded like sped up. I'd never kissed a girl, but I was convinced that I wanted to. Some part of me hated myself for that, but I buried that part under desire. 

I flew, and I spun, dipping low enough to catch the sea spray and then drying off in Alex's heat. She didn't want me to, but she couldn't stop me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha I finally finished Orange Is The New Black (I was on season 7 when I started writing this, but I've been busy). That probably won't make this any more canon-compliant, sorry. Hope you enjoyed and leave a comment - Bella :)


	10. I'm reaching for you, are you feeling it too?

I didn't sleep well that night, instead drifting half-heartedly between distracted dreams and waking every two hours, too hot or too thirsty or needing the toilet. I had gone downstairs at around 2 am, getting a drink, where the faucet sounded too loud in the empty house. I had this feeling, looking out of the window, that was like a continuation of my earlier thoughts - the flip side of the coin about my town. I watched all the houses with their lights off, feeling that I really really didn't belong there.

I would have these clear periods, that summer, where I was determined to convince myself that I wasn't 'normal', that I maybe felt about girls the way I'd been taught to feel about boys, but then I would turn around and remind myself that that wasn't really me. I just hadn't found a man yet, and Alex was tempting me.

Creeping outside, careful not to wake my parents, I stepped out into the cold air, which froze onto my bare legs. I sat down on the steps of the porch, glass of water cupped between two hands like I was young again. I took a drink, not realizing yet how lucky I was to have grown up in that town, with the money and resources I had. Behind me,t the door swung shut and I let it - I was sure it wasn't locked.

If I did kiss Alex, I thought, would I regret it? And if yes, then for how long? Give it a month, a year, a decade? I couldn't imagine being almost thirty and still regretting a kiss I had at eighteen in a boring summer holiday. That's what this was: I was bored and I craved drama and I tried to start it with Larry but he was too compliant and now I was, what? Pretending to be gay because I couldn't sit still? I knew I was smart, but I had skipped class and still got into college, got away with spending not enough time actually studying because I cared more about entertainment than the consequences. Except college had worked out, in the end. Smiths had accepted me. And maybe this, with Alex, would work out too.

I finished my drink. Stood up. Slowly, I went back to my room. The sheets felt softer after the cold.

-

A few days later, a paper aeroplane flew into my room, it read, in sharpie: 'GET UP' - Alex.

"I am up!" I called out, and then walked onto the balcony but stopped dead as I saw her in a black dress with her hair all pinned up above her head, like a disney princess standing before me, transformed. "Shit."

She smiled, "Today would have been my prom day - they had it at a dumb summer-holiday time, I don't know wh, but I can't go. So..."

"Oh-" I didn't think I had a coherent sentence in my brain.

"Get dressed. What did you wear to prom?"

"I didn't go."

"Piper Chapman didn't go to prom? I refuse to believe you."

"No, really, I skipped it with Larry."

"What were you going to wear then?"

"I never had an outfit, but my Mom went to prom in the fifties..."

"Yes. Absolutely. I would love to see you in a fifties prom dress."

"Give me half an hour."

-

Forty minutes later we were in the back road behind the shut-down bowling alley, which smelled of cigarettes and old pizza.

Alex looked up at the open window above the dumpster. "We are not breaking and entering."

"Technically we're not breaking, just entering."

"Trespassing then. Have you done this before?"

"No. This is where I came on prom night, but that was its last day open before shutting down. I've snuck into a swimming pool after hours though, and me and Larry said we'd come here."

"I think it's a bad idea."

"Fine, fine. We'll do something else." I started to walk away, my Mom's dress swishing satisfactorily as I moved.

"Wait." She stopped.

I turned slowly.

"I'll do it. What's the worst that could happen?"

"I don't know. You might fall in love with me."

"Okay."

"Really?"

"It's a risk I'm willing to take. You go first."

Smiling to myself, I climbed onto the dumpster, chucking my bag through the window and then sliding through it myself, landing on one of the sofas near the bar.

"Clear!" I called up, moving off it.

A moment later, a blur of black glitter fell through. It was dark inside, with all the lights off and only sunlight falling through the windows to half-illuminate the alley. On the ground, left over glow-sticks from the past life of the alley lit up patches of the ugly carpet. They must have been from that prom night.

"Wow." Alex said slowly, standing up and readjusting her dress. "I'm still scared we'll get caught."

"'cause you're chicken."

"Shut up." She looked beautiful and out of place against the dust and worn furniture and dark neon signs.

I walked over to the jukebox and pulled a quarter from my bra, choosing a song. "I'm surprised the electricity still works."

"They're not expecting people to break in. Who would be stupid enough to break into a bowling alley?"

The song I'd chosen kicked in, and I started singing along, "I'm lying alone, with my head on the phone, thinking of you till it hurts."

She laughed. "Air supply?"

"Tell me that they wouldn't have played this at your prom with a straight face?"

"You have a point." She admitted. "So, are we going to dance?"

I curtseyed, and she bowed in return, and then she reached her hands to me and we spun, still too afraid to be in each other's arms, around the makeshift dance floor.

"Piper." She said, with a tone of voice that made me stop and look at her. "You took me to a bowling alley and convinced me to dance to a cheesy love song. Is this a date yet?"

"But we're not going to kiss." I held firmly to that. Too firmly.

"Clearly I forgot about that prerequisite."

"Clearly you did."

"I think you might be the only person I know who wouldn't ask me what prerequisite means." She admitted, laughing a little.

"Smiths, remember?"

"I remember."

When the song ended I pulled two cans of cola from my bag.

"You thought of everything." She acknowledged, going to open it.

"Hold on." I stopped her. "They would have fizzed up when I threw them through the window." I took her's back off of her and opened it away from me, letting the brown foam flow over and dribble down onto the carpet. 

We sat on chairs on the bar, me next to her, and even with the small distance between us, it was too much contact for me. There was little talking as we drank, I suppose we were both uncomfortable, and when we finished I put both cans back into my bag, leaving behind no evidence.

I climbed back up through the window, standing on the back of the sofa and pulling myself up and through inelegantly. 

Alex was halfway through the window when she slipped, one of her sneakers sliding off the edge of the dumpster, and instinctively I reached out to catch her. For a moment all my attention was on stopping her from falling or ripping her dress, and we ended with me pinning her to the bin above me, as she pulled her other leg through. In one breath, we both realized that we were way too close, before she reached her arms around me and hugged me. I froze, scared of every consequence and all it meant, up on my tiptoes with her head on my shoulder so I could feel her warm breath on my neck. I could feel the hidden muscles under the skin of her arms, the straps of her bra through her dress. 

"Thank you." She said softly, into my ear.

I abandoned all my thoughts and wrapped my arms around her, the material of the dress sliding across my hands and her chest moving as she breathed against me.

-

I went to bed early that night, tired of my thoughts, my mouth tasting of the sticky sweet cola. I thought to myself that forevermore, warm shaken cans of cola would take be back to that darkened room. I just kept replaying the hug in my head, how wrong it felt - like it was breaking even more rules than us sneaking in. It felt wrong because it was a girl in my arms, and I was hardly able to breathe.

\- 

The next day I called Polly, nervous to recount what had happened. 

"Guess what I did?" I said into the phone, lowering my voice so no one would overhear.

"What?" She echoed.

"You know where me and Larry went on prom night?"

"You went bowling?"

"I couldn't. The bowling alley shut down."

"So what then?"

"Remember last summer when the swimming pool closed? And we-"

"-You snuck in?"

"Yup."

"No way."

"Yes. We played music on the jukebox and-"

"We?"

"Me and Alex. My neighbour."

"Oh." She paused. "Wait, Pipes, I just remembered something."

"What?"

"I found my diary from when we were ten."

"That's cool."

"I remember now, what you were saying about us making a dance to Crazy Little Thing Called Love."

"Oh, yeah." Suddenly I was nervous.

She laughed. "Remember how we practiced kissing?"

"Yeah." I tried to laugh too, make a joke out of it, but my heart was in my throat and I was putting all my effort into staying calm.

"Well, I wrote it into my diary."

"That it was good?"

"Sort of. I said it was nice and I couldn't wait to kiss a boy."

"And then you found out boys can't kiss and I'm just great, right?"

"Hey! I like kissing boys." She took a breath. "My whole diary when I was ten was about you, you know?"

"Good things?"

"Yeah." The past hung between us. She suddenly felt so far away - she must have been feeling it too when she said "I miss you." 

"I miss you too. I love you, Polly."

"I love you too, Piper."

I thought of what she''d looked like when I last saw her when I visited over Christmas and yet it had still been so warm we had a water fight in the sea, and then she had smoked her first cigarette with a boy whose name I couldn't remember, and I'd felt like I was watching her grow up in real-time, and she hadn't coughed. What sort of person doesn't cough on their first cigarette? And then we had both slept in her bed, with me wearing her shirt and her falling asleep, leaving me watching her.

I missed her so much. It wasn't just the gap of distance, it was that we were having these experiences apart from one another, and I couldn't tell her how I felt.


End file.
